250 and Counting: January 29, 1775

Cover art for January 29, 1775: portrait of Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin, like many of our Founding Fathers, was interested in repairing the relationship between the Colonies and England, at least early on.

What’s more, he thought that others in similar positions would be of a similar mind, so he was rather dismayed to learn that this wasn’t the case; in fact, when a sheaf of letters written by Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver made their way into his hands, he was rather dismayed to learn that they were badly misleading Parliament with regard to the situation in the Colonies.

So Franklin leaked the letters to the Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, saying they could be read but not copied. But Franklin didn’t heed his own advice: “Three people may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” The letters got out anyway, and they were published in the Boston Gazette a few months later. For his efforts, Franklin was humiliated in a Privy Council hearing and stripped of his title of Postmaster General of the Colonies. On the other hand, this was the event that tipped Benjamin Franklin firmly over to the cause of liberty.

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250 and Counting: January 14, 1775

Cover art for January 14, 1775: portratt of Lord Dartmouth

William Legge was the Second Earl of Dartmouth and, just before the hostilities between the Colonists and the British started in earnest, was also the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the First Lord of Trade.

Lord Dartmouth noticed that people throughout the Colonies appeared to be preparing for all-out war, so he sent a letter to the colonial governors, essentially ordering them to embargo imports of weapons or ammunition. In doing this, he was basically fulfilling his duty to the Crown.

Simultaneously, however, he was trying to employ backdoor diplomacy tactics to negotiate a peace. Benjamin Franklin was among the people with whom he communicated. But it’s tough to argue for peace when your troops are occupying Boston, and his actions ultimately led to the Gunpowder Plot, and the war heating up for good at Lexington and Concord just a few months later.

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250 and Counting: January 13, 1775

At one time there were rumors that Benjamin Franklin had lots and lots of children born out of wedlock. (Insert your favorite “lightning rod” joke here.) As usual, the real story is more complicated than that.

Franklin courted a woman named Deborah Reed. At the time, he was 17 and she was 15, so her mother forbade the marriage. Deborah later married another man who fled the country. Sometime after this, Franklin re-entered the picture, but because the status of her marriage was unclear, they simply lived together as common-law spouses. They had two children together, so technically they were “born out of wedlock.” Francis Folger Franklin died of smallpox at the age of four, and Sarah Folger Franklin was also politically active until her death at the age of 68. Meanwhile, Franklin had another “illegitimate” son whose mother is not known (and was also probably Deborah), but he acknowledged his own parentage and together they raised him. This was William Franklin, the future Royal Governor of New Jersey.

That’s it. That’s all of Benjamin Franklin’s kids. But we’re focused on William today.

William was appointed the Royal Governor of New Jersey largely because he was known to have Loyalist leanings. And while he was pretty good at being governor, there did come a point where New Jersey said “Enough of this” and imprisoned him locally for six months before moving him to Connecticut for two years. (This is an event alluded to in the play 1776, but by that point Franklin really had to know that his son had been removed from office. He probably didn’t know yet that William had just been moved to Connecticut, so by early July that would have been news to him.)

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250 and Counting: January 7, 1775

Cover art for January 7, 1775: “Lady Howe Checkmating Benjamin Franklin,” by Edward Harrison May.

By all accounts, Ben Franklin was a charming guy. And while he has a reputation today for being the sort of ladies’ man who left behind lots of children with single moms, that wasn’t really the case (as you’ll discover in a future episode).

But part of his charm came from his diplomacy skills, which he knew how to use to the fullest. And part of those skills included learning what friends he could make who had a great deal of social capital he could use.

One such person was Lady Caroline Howe, who first met Franklin in 1774 as part of a shadow diplomacy tactic. Although this didn’t go far, Howe and Franklin maintained a relationship over the years and frequently visited one another for conversation and games of chess. (Ben Franklin was quite the avid chess player, often playing several times a week in multi-hour sessions.) Today’s episode discusses some of this, and their efforts to get together to play a match.

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Guest voice in this episode: Serena Gaylord